Chad Gilbert carried the riff that became "All Downhill from Here" through a car ride by singing it aloud until he could reach a guitar. The New Found Glory co-founder, lead guitarist, backing vocalist and songwriter, whose riffs drove early-2000s pop-punk staples such as "My Friends Over You" and "All Downhill from Here," died on September 20, 2026. He was 45.

That drive ended with Gilbert grabbing his guitar and fixing the idea into the song that opened New Found Glory's Catalyst era. He later told GRAMMY.com that its animated video stayed on MTV's TRL long enough to be retired. It was his characteristic route from spark to shared anthem: hold a rhythm, shape it with the band, send it toward a crowd.

Gilbert came from South Florida's hardcore world, where he had sung for Shai Hulud. New Found Glory formed in Coral Springs in 1997, and his clipped, weighty guitar attack helped bind hardcore force to pop melody. The band's official Pure Noise Records biography traces that mixture from its teenage scene years through its later records.

The scale began modestly. Gilbert worked at a movie theater while the members pooled a few hundred dollars apiece to make Nothing Gold Can Stay. They booked shows by calling friends in other states and traveled with one shared Nokia phone. Their self-titled 2000 album carried the sound outward, while 2002's Sticks and Stones gave it one of its defining choruses.

"My Friends Over You" almost missed that album. Gilbert brought in its guitar riff after the rest of Sticks and Stones was essentially finished and pressed the tired group to try one more song. It became the first single and, when the band revisited its catalog with GRAMMY.com in 2020, its biggest song. Two years after Sticks and Stones, Catalyst pushed harder toward Gilbert's hardcore instincts without surrendering the band's bright melodies.

His work also moved beyond New Found Glory. AllMusic credited him as a producer on A Day to Remember's 2009 album Homesick. In 2013 he returned to the microphone for Shai Hulud, singing and producing Reach Beyond the Sun. Exclaim! noted that the album reunited the voice from the band's debut with the producer Gilbert had become. His two musical homes kept sounding through each other.

New Found Glory kept writing as its scene changed. The 2023 acoustic release Make the Most of It opened another lane, and Listen Up! followed in February 2026. For that record, bassist Ian Grushka and drummer Cyrus Bolooki traveled to Gilbert's Nashville-area home to shape songs he had been developing, returning to a riff-first way of arranging around a guitar.

For all the stages and records, Gilbert described his family as the dream that mattered most. People via AOL reported that his wife, Lisa Cimorelli, and their daughter, Lily, were central to the way he measured his life. Earlier in 2026 he said, "I always wanted to play music, and I got that, but my biggest dream was to be married to a beautiful wife that would love me and have a daughter."

He was equally direct about the work: "We wanted to write songs and music that would inspire people, everyday people who could relate." The crowded choruses that met New Found Glory across decades grew from that aim, with Gilbert's riffs giving listeners something sturdy enough to shout together.

The riffs he carried from a car to a rehearsal room still open pits and singalongs in the same breath. They persist in "My Friends Over You," "All Downhill from Here," Shai Hulud's Gilbert-fronted records and the later songs assembled at his Nashville-area home. Together they keep the bridge he built between South Florida hardcore and pop-punk standing, loud enough for another band of teenagers to cross.